


Wight

by supaslim



Series: The Way of All Flesh [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Cannibalism, Gen, Independent New Vegas (Fallout), evil karma, figuratively speaking, neutral good on the streets but chaotic evil in the sheets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-11
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-08 08:34:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 17,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1130511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/supaslim/pseuds/supaslim
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Bear comes shuffling from the west, while the Bull charges from the east. A monster lies hidden between them.</p>
<p>When men die, the Courier smiles through the gore caught in his teeth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 12-16-2017: This fic now has a direct sequel, "That We Become." In light of this, I've decided to revisit Wight and do some much needed editing and a couple of very minor retcons to make everything flow much nicer together.
> 
> Please leave a comment, and be sure to read "That We Become!"

It was dim in the Lucky 38, and altogether too quiet. Though there were seven warm bodies in the dusty presidential suite, no voices grew loud enough to break the haze of grim, pensive silence hanging over the place.

The Courier’s companions sat in the spare room, waiting for a sign from their strange leader. He was no friend to them; as charismatic as he was, he was also disturbingly off kilter. And yet, he had still somehow managed to gain their allegiance, if strained and temporary. Boone eyed his ragtag comrades over from his seat at the table in the corner, a habit born from his army days and retained from ingrained paranoia.

Lying on one of the beds across the room was the impossibly pale Follower’s scientist, Arcade Gannon. It hadn’t taken much to persuade him to join up with the Courier; Boone had been there.

“Things are going to change around here,” the Courier had said.

“Change? How?”

“Water. Electricity.” There was a short pause, and then the Courier added “Safety.”

And that was all it had taken.

Then there was the hooded girl, Veronica. She was just entering the room, no doubt looking for somebody to pester. She was about his age but felt younger, and carried no weapon that Boone could see. What she was doing here, he had no idea. The Courier hadn’t shown interest in anybody he couldn’t use. The sniper wasn’t too dumb to see it; he knew how it was. Even if he was just a delivery boy, he was an excellent tactician… and a cold one. No, the girl had to be good for something other than rambling incessantly about some fancy dress and prying into other people’s business.

“Hey, Boone!” she chirped, sinking into a seat across from him, and blocking his view of the door. He glowered behind his shades, and shifted his weight so it was back in sight. “Boone!” she repeated, leaning into his view and drawing his attention again. How she knew his name, he couldn’t say. He didn’t talk to her. “I’m bored. Play a card game with me.”

“No.” She seemed somewhat put out, but there was also confusion in her eyes. Did she want him to like her? She did put a lot of effort into trying to get to know everyone the Courier had brought here. More than he had, anyway, but he hadn’t tried at all. He just wanted to kill Caesar and go home.

“Fine. I guess I’ll ask Arcade.” She got up from her seat and crossed the room to the doctor, who seemed to share Boone’s disinterest towards the girl. The blond humored her, though, which was more than the NCR veteran was willing to do. And honestly, it wasn’t that she was annoying. Not really. It was just that she treated this whole situation like it was a fun trip to Vegas instead of preparation for a very real battle.

“She’s a handful,” rasped the ghoul from the corner, where he was cleaning his revolver. Raul, his name was, even if his shirt suggested otherwise. A cursory glance his way revealed the ghoul was, indeed, talking to him, still leaning over his work.

The Courier had found him at Black Mountain, captive of several supermutants that had taken over the radio tower there. Or so the ex-Mojave Express employee had told Boone when he first spotted the decayed man. Frankly, he didn’t understand how an old zombie with a six-shooter would be desirable to a man as ambitious as their shared acquaintance. But then, it was the Courier who held all the cards, not Craig Boone or anyone else in their ragtag group. Hell, he didn’t even know the Courier’s name.

“Not many people do,” the man had told him concisely shortly after they started traveling together. “It’s hardly important, and not at all relevant.” They hadn’t spoken about it since.

Of course, one in their party would call him Jimmy. It might have been his name, but Boone suspected it wasn’t. After all, did any of the damn Nightkin’s rantings make much sense? She was completely insane, and he trusted her about as far as he could throw her. At least he could understand her value to the Courier, though- the supermutants were infamous for their brute strength and hardiness, and as supermutants went, this one was surprisingly docile. Docile, but loud. Even asleep. At that moment, she was snoring on the far bed, old mattress bowing under her immense weight.

And then there was the dog. That fucking Legion dog. “Just a dog,” the others proclaimed, but Boone knew better. The fucking beast had been in the Legion’s ranks, as the crimson bulls painted on its flanks suggested, and even now it bore the brain of a Legion mongrel that the Courier had apparently pummeled to death in an arena.

How did I get here, Boone wondered suddenly, blinking and looking at the others in the room as if for the first time. I came to kill Legion troops, but instead I’m sitting around a casino that nobody’s ever been in, while my companion runs off and makes deals with the Legion. Sure, he says he’s using them… but he’s also using me.

With that, Boone rose, and strode to the door. Silently he prowled to the master bedroom, where he knew the Courier would be sitting. As expected, he found the man perched on the foot of the bed, idly scratching the dog’s neck as he gazed over what looked like his entire armory laid neatly across the floor. Boone had been with him when they had collected several of these weapons. He recognized Ratslayer nearest to the door; the black butt of the rifle marked with a painted rodent skull and ticks for every one taken out with the weapon. Next to it was the powerful Gauss rifle, taken from the locked gun cabinet of a booze distillery. The sniper reached down and took it from the floor, looking it over. There were scratches and scuffs on every surface of the weapon, many put there after they had obtained it. It could probably do with some maintenance, too, but the Courier didn’t care for that gun. Its electromagnetic pulse interfered with his PipBoy.

A moment later, Boone was aware of the Courier’s cold gaze on him. He matched it with his own piercing stare, shifting the rifle into a more comfortable position in his arms.

“This is a good gun,” he remarked briefly, peering through the scope and mentally weighing it before putting it back on the floor, purposely leaving it somewhat askew.

“There are better,” replied the Courier, narrowing his eyes and rising from his seat. The dog whimpered, but stayed put as his Master walked down the rows of guns and selected a very particular camouflaged sniper rifle from the assortment. “I believe this one has proven itself effective in the past.” Touché. Boone tore his eyes away from the Gobi Campaign scout rifle and instead feigned interest in the Courier’s little-used Anti-Materiel Rifle.

“When are we leaving?” Boone asked suddenly, but the other man was not put off by his abrupt query. The Courier seemed to think a long while as he replaced the rifle that killed Boone’s wife, circled the massive collection of firearms and straightened out the coil gun Boone had left crooked.

Everything in its place. Guns, yes, and people too. He was wandering into uncharted territory by questioning his companion like this.

“I haven’t decided,” the Courier said at long last, returning to his seat and resuming his staring contest with the grenade launchers.

“Then what the hell have you been doing for the past week and a half?!” Boone hissed, anger with the man bubbling to the surface.

“...Deciding.” Boone inhaled sharply, but then squeezed his eyes shut, and slowly, slowly exhaled, refusing to lose his temper here, of all places, when he had never once lost it in all of his time with the NCR. Anger would not be useful here. The Courier didn’t respond to it, only smiled coldly as if enjoying some personal joke at the enraged sniper’s expense. He had seen it before several times, and it never failed to disturb him somehow, like a cold hand lightly brushing his heart. How the Courier would smile so benignly as he planted an unholy flaming sword contraption he had pieced together into some idiot Fiend’s gut, spilling intestines and setting them alight. How his lips would curl up ever so slightly when he got his way, and the other party was left with nothing- the cannibal he had outed in the Ultra Luxe, for one, and the man who had bet three hundred caps against his survival outside the Nellis Air Force Base. If he didn’t know better, Boone might have thought the Courier had only made the suicidal sprint to the base’s gates just to spite the man and see the look on his face. He got off on it, and it was disgusting.

“What’s there to decide?” Boone pressed, edging around a Fat Man to lean against the edge of the desk tucked into the corner. “You say you aren’t siding with the Legion, and you aren’t serving House, which leaves the NCR. Why haven’t you gone to see their ambassador? You were contacted by a representative,” he mentioned, growing suspicious. The Courier remained serene, however, gaze rolling over to contemplate an experimental laser rifle he had found in an abandoned Vault in the mountains.

“I won’t be rushed, Boone.” It was a warning. Boone scowled.

“Then what do we do?”

“You wait.”

* * *

In the middle of the fourth night, Boone woke up in his makeshift bed on the floor to the sound of footsteps in the dark guest room. Gannon had the bed that night, sharing it with the girl. The Nightkin slept in the other, while the ghoul was snoring wheezily on the floor between the beds. Between the pair of them, the footsteps were very nearly drowned out, but he felt the vibrations in the floor and his eyes snapped open. A dark shape was moving slowly among them, glancing from one to the next with some hesitation.

“Still deciding?” quipped Boone sardonically.

“In a way.” The Courier nudged Arcade Gannon’s leg, waking him up. “Both of you, come with me.”

They followed him into the hallway.

“Where I go, only one of you may come with.”

“Wherever you go, only one of us can come with,” Arcade pointed out dryly. The Courier refused to travel with more than a single companion and the dog. Usually he traveled alone.

“Only one of you,” he reiterated, looking meaningfully between the pair.

“Where?” asked Boone, wary.

“Fortification Hill,” came the reply, and a surprisingly powerful hand grabbed hold of Boone’s shoulder with an iron grip as he turned to leave the room. “Stay here,” he growled, laying bare a hint of the menace that the sniper knew was there all along.

“And why us? We both dislike the Legion,” the scientist asked somewhat scathingly. Darkly, the Courier eyed him, and finally deigned to reply.

“The Legion kills mutants and ghouls on sight. The women they keep as slaves. I can’t risk that.”

Of course not. You’d be wasting assets, wouldn’t you. And I’ll bet that pansy scientist thinks you’re being noble.

“Why take one of us at all?” Arcade went on to ask, ignoring the look Boone was giving him.

“Why go yourself?” Boone growled in turn.

“The Fort was built over a secret compound. I need in.”

“You can get in,” the blond man said slowly, growing more suspicious. Gannon was there when Vulpes Inculta had approached them on the Strip and gave the Courier the Mark of Caesar, and even before that the Courier had been to the Fort to win Rex's new brain in the arena. “Why you’d want to get back into that camp of savages, I don’t-“

“He can’t get out,” Boone said suddenly, connecting the dots. Then, his perpetual frown deepened. “What’s under that Fort?” Whatever it was, if the Courier reached it, it would piss off Caesar enough to trap and kill him, no matter how many men he lost in the process.

“A tool that can be used to stop the Legion... but reaching it may alarm them. Getting in should be easy. Getting out...” The Courier shrugged. "It'll be easier if I have somebody on the inside, let Caesar think he has leverage." It was perhaps the first time Boone had heard him say Caesar's name in private. Publicly, he altered his pronunciation according to who he was speaking to. Here, he used the soft "C," and it was almost reassuring.

...Then again, the small force gathered at the Lucky 38 was, in a way, just one more faction to be won over.

“So you want one of us to keep a foot in the door for you while you’re doing God knows what?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t trust you,” Boone stated bluntly. The Courier laughed, a harsh exhalation coupled with the baring of jagged yellowed teeth. Boone and Gannon both took a half a step back, startled.

“I don’t expect you to. How can you trust a man with no name?” There was a moment’s uncomfortable silence as all three stared at each other.

“Take the scientist,” Boone told the Courier at last, crossing his toned arms over his chest. “He knows the language, and he doesn’t have a feud with the Legion.”

“Hang on, now,” objected Arcade, hands held up in front of him, but he had no need to argue further.

“Boone, I think it’s best if I take you,” their leader interjected quietly, muddy eyes cutting through the sniper. “Go get some supplies for the trip. We leave in half an hour.”

Arcade shook his head, bewildered, but said nothing and went back to the spare room to get some more sleep. Boone lingered in the hall for a few seconds, appraising the Courier and being assessed himself. There was something he was missing, but he wasn’t sure what. After a long moment, he too turned his back on the Courier to go pick a weapon from their extensive arsenal. When his name was softly spoken to his back, however, he paused.

“Craig. If you start a fight at the Fort, I won’t just let them kill you.” Confusion flashed across the sharpshooter’s face, unseen by the man behind him. When the Courier continued though, the tone of the statement was transformed from unexpected compassion to something much darker. “I’ll put a bullet in your brain myself, and I’ll do a better job of it than the fucker that shot me.”


	2. Chapter 2

It was well before dawn when they set out, but it wasn’t dark and it certainly wasn’t dead. Even in the wee hours of the morning, drunken troopers and wealthy Wastelanders wandered the main street of the Strip, buzzing from one casino to the next with abandon. Though more heavily armed and armored than most others in the light crowd, they blended in. The only thing that set them apart was the robotic dog that trailed in their wake, drawing attention from some of the more sober gamblers. Even they, holed up under their rocks in the perceived safety of New Vegas, recognized the bull stenciled on Rex’s battered steel sides. Only a scarce few who had worked up the caps in Freeside wondered aloud, “Isn’t that the King’s dog?”

The Courier ignored them, setting a brisk pace towards the north gates and out of New Vegas through Freeside. At this point, they no longer experienced trouble in the poverty-stricken streets there. The trail of corpses the Courier had left behind him in his first few trips through the slum was still filling the streets and curbsides with a rotting stench, dissuading any further attacks.

Even when they left civilization entirely and took to the wastes under the blistering sun, very few attempts were made on their lives. There were two incidents with Vipers, quickly ended by the pair of experienced gunmen, and as night was falling, they had a run-in with a Giant Radscorpion. It found itself vaporized when it made the bad decision of charging the Courier, who was currently wearing Maria on his hip.

All in all, things were quiet. For better or for worse, the Mojave knew better than to fuck with the Courier. He had already killed everyone with the gumption to try.

* * *

“Why am I here?”

The question was finally asked as they trekked down the broken road toward the Dam. The damned Legion robo-dog was in the lead, constantly trotting several yards ahead, then circling back when he realized the two humans were still plodding along where he had left them. Sweat poured down their backs, making their leather armor chafe and stick unpleasantly. Repeatedly they would turn their faces to the ground in a mix of exhaustion and overheating, until a moment later they would remember to watch for danger on the horizon through the dark tint of their authority shades. In this excruciating heat, even the Courier seemed human. The sun made him irritable- his version of irritable, anyhow. Rather than put the effort into a long reply, he gave only a curt answer to the question.

“Foot in the door. Forgot already?”

“Why am I really here.”

“Existentially? Or figuratively? Rhetorically, I hope…” Frustrated, Boone pulled off his sunglasses and roughly wiped the sweat from his face with the heel of one hand before replacing them.

“Gannon was the obvious choice. Why bring me.”

“Because you don’t trust me, Craig.” The Courier’s genial (if weary) tone had made a sudden turn towards something cooler.

“And you think this will help?” The Courier ignored Boone’s sarcasm, and maintained the harsh pace he had set, fractured slabs of asphalt crumbling beneath his feet as he trudged along.

“Not in the slightest.”

They went on in silence, except for the rhythmic beat of their boots on the tarmac.

Everything in its place. Even people.

The thought came unbidden to Boone’s mind, and suddenly, the Courier’s decision made sense to him. The Nightkin, the dog, the girl… they were infatuated with the Courier. Even the ghoul and the scientist were made complacent after a few well chosen words.

And that left Boone. Boone, who had suspicion in his blood and murder on his mind. Boone, who had no reason to believe the Courier was a force of good in the Mojave. Boone, the only member of the group with experience handling everything from shotguns to missile launchers.

“You’re keeping your friends close, and your enemies closer,” the sniper stated out of the blue. This is what made the Courier finally pause to glance back at his companion.

“I just don’t want you to do anything you’d regret, Craig. Neither of us want the Legion in power, and I don’t want you as my enemy.” And you don’t want me as yours, said the tone of his voice and the way his sentence hung seemingly unfinished in the air. Before Boone could reply, the Courier pointed up towards a large building and the peaks of tents and the crest of a dilapidated hotel over the next ridge. “Camp Golf. We can rest there.”

* * *

They arrived fifteen minutes later, to a small welcoming party of NCR recruits with bottled water. Several of the inexperienced soldiers crowded around them in awe; half recognized Boone’s beret and were star struck, and the rest had been hearing stories about the Courier on the radio and were eager to hear more from the man himself.

“Did you really kill that Vegas guy in his own casino because he looked at you funny?”

“Were you at Bitter Springs? What was it like?” Boone scowled and pushed past a few of the nosier ones, taking a bottle of water as he went and drinking almost all of it in one go. The Courier lagged behind, more swamped than his somber companion.

“A trader told me you wiped out a whole canyon of Deathclaws with only a varmint rifle because it was the quickest way north!”

“I have a buddy at McCarran what says you took the head right off of that Fiend fella’ Cook-Cook without even knowing about the bounty!”

“Easy,” the Courier finally said, voice slightly raised. He jabbed a finger towards the first to talk to him, a wiry young man with helmet hair. “No, I did not kill a man because he looked at me funny.” His finger turned towards the next speaker. “It was an Anti-Materiel Rifle, not a varmint rifle. And you in the back; your buddy was right.” The group hushed, amazed by the apparently all-powerful wastelander. Boone just scowled and began peeling his armor off as he walked towards the large pond behind the tents to clean up a bit.

The Courier watched him go, ambivalent, as more questions were asked of him.

“Have you really been into the Lucky 38?”

“Is it true you’ve explored three different Vaults?”

“Yes and yes, if you don’t count 21. Is there a tent somewhere with two spare cots that my companion and I could use?”

“You can have mine, sir!” One young woman blurted a split second later.

“And mine!” a tent mate volunteered, holding his hand high in the air.

“Thank you,” the Courier said, wearing a saccharine smile as he accepted a bottle of water for himself. “Would you show me which…? Thanks again. I think I’ll just go lay down for a bit. Been traveling for some time.”

He spent the next half hour basking in the shade of the tent, sprawled on his back across the stained mattress. Ah, a mattress… Such luxuries came few and far between. He let his eyes close, arms folded behind his head, ignoring the shouts and general army noises outside his borrowed tent. Eventually, Boone pushed through the tent flap, soggy and irritated.

“You aren’t wearing your beret.” It was in the sniper’s hand, laying bare his severe buzz cut.

“Went for a swim,” he growled foul-temperedly, wringing water from the cap. One of the “Misfits,” as another soldier had called them, had accidentally fired a grenade launcher in his direction. It was either dive into the pond, or get riddled with shrapnel. It might have turned out better for the idiots if he had been blown to bits, though- Boone had had a very heated discussion with the nearest officer he could find. As it was, the Misfits were still being chewed out by their very frustrated, very embarrassed commanding officer for nearly exploding a veteran from the 1st Recon and embarrassing the whole camp.

“I see. That one’s yours.” The Courier motioned towards the cot opposite him. Boone grunted affirmation and moved the duffle bag laying on it to the floor before sitting to unlace his boots.

“Made some friends?” The Courier had been unusually forthcoming and friendly with the Camp Golf recruits.

“With friends come hospitality.”

“Of course.”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t appreciate the warm welcome. Where else will somebody get you a cold drink and a bed the moment you arrive?” Boone wrinkled his nose with disgust at his companion.

“You’re a snake.”

“Because I expect compensation for the help I’ve provided for the NCR? Hardly. I’m a businessman.”

The sniper said nothing to contest him any further; instead, he laid down, staring at the worn canvas ceiling to the tent.

“Get some sleep. We’re leaving after sunset.”

* * *

Boone was woken up from his light sleep when the Courier’s PipBoy alarm went off around seven in the evening. With an inner groan, he sat up on his borrowed mattress, blinking away his sleepiness. Looking over, he saw that the Courier was already up, sitting at the foot of the other cot and rifling through his pack. He took a moment to turn off the alarm, but then returned to his searching for a few seconds longer before pulling a mole rat skin bag from it. A heavy metallic clinking noise came from inside.

“Legion coin,” the Courier explained simply. “We’ll be getting into their territory pretty soon, and this is the only currency they’ll take.” But Boone wasn’t listening. Instead, he had one hand running over his closely cropped hair, eyes darting around the tent.

“Where is my beret?”

“Haven’t seen it,” replied the Courier as he pulled the drawstring on his pack and slung it over his shoulder. “Maybe one of your fans took a souvenir.”

“Those fucking…” muttered the sniper, and he made to leave the tent, but the Courier was on his feet in a moment, holding Boone back with a hand on his chest.

“We can hunt it down on the way back.” He met Boone’s glare with one of his own. “Honestly, Craig, how many people are wandering around with 1st Recon berets? It’ll be easy to find, we just don’t have the time right now.” With a drawn out angry sigh, the sniper gave in.

“We will retrieve it on the way back.” A nod from the Courier confirmed it, and the hand fell from his chest, letting Boone prowl angrily from the tent, leading the way back out into the Mojave.

They settled the next day in the shadow of two large boulders that had eroded to form a sort of shelf over the desert floor. It had clearly been used as a campsite before; two pieces of rusted sheet metal were half-buried on either end of the shelf, with their top edges resting against the stone overhang, leaving only a gap in the middle for entry and several holes where the rust ate through to keep watch. In front were the blackened remains of a fire.

The two men and the robodog all fit easily inside the makeshift shelter, but with little room to spare. As soon as they were in, the Courier traded his pistol for Ratslayer, earning a disbelieving look from Boone.

“Why hang onto that piece of junk?” The Courier didn’t respond immediately, only positioned the muzzle of the gun in one of the larger rust holes, making sure he could comfortably aim and fire before looking coolly back at his companion.

“Perhaps it doesn’t pack the brute strength your rifle does, Craig, but it’s beautifully accurate.”

“Precision over power,” mused Boone from his corner as he took a cigarette from one pocket and lit it up.

“Always. Honestly, of all my companions, I would have expected you, the sniper, to understand. You don’t see me wandering the Mojave with an army behind me, do you?” asked the Courier a bit sharply before he bit into a piece of gecko jerky.

“And why not?” Boone frowned, slowly exhaling a haze of smoke as he held his cigarette between two fingers by another hole in the sheet metal he was jammed up against. “You’ve got every faction in this part of the U.S. on your side. You wouldn’t have trouble finding the manpower.”

“Not every faction,” corrected the leader. “The Vipers don’t really appreciate me blasting the heads off of half their men, and the Powder Gangers aren’t too happy with me either. Mini-nuking the prison apparently pissed them off.”

“You know what I meant. You’ve got the NCR and New Vegas- and I don’t know how you managed it, but you got the Great Khans and the Vault freaks up at Nellis fawning over you. Hell, even the Legion,” he added begrudgingly.

“They aren’t the only ones,” added the Courier mildly. “I’ve also got the Brotherhood of Steel and the Enclave.”

“What- they’re still around?” The sudden hint of anger in his voice made Rex stir from where he laid between them and growl. His master quickly but calmly reached out and laid a hand on the dog’s shoulder, and the beast curled back up on the ground. Still, he watched Boone carefully with his dark eyes, thoughts visibly flaring red in his glass brain case.

“Relax, they’re no threat to your NCR. Only a handful of men from the Enclave remain, and only one of them is still faithful to the organization itself. As for the Brotherhood, I expect it will die out within the next few generations if nobody quickens the process for them first.”

“Then why cozy up to them?”

“I’m a man of precision, Craig. A single companion with incredible skill is worth more than an entire army of undertrained recruits.”

“And yet you haven’t holed any of their fighters up in that damned casino yet.”

The Courier only smiled.

Boone frowned, and looked out into the night. Spotting movement, he took up his rifle, the Courier following suit. A band of night stalkers marched the waste. One looked over at the shelter with its bulbous eyes, and Boone's jaw clenched as he prepared to put it down.

A hand fell heavily on his arm, and he irritably lowered the rifle to see the Courier watching the creatures, head cocked and eyes blank. Slowly, he turned his head, and gave Boone a mocking smile.

"They're just night stalkers, Boone. They’re not interested in us. They’re looking for dinner, not death."


	3. Chapter 3

They traveled the road without incident, occasionally noticing the glow of fires quickly extinguished and glints of light reflecting from binocular lenses and rifle scopes on the crests of nearby ridges, watching them as they traveled south, away from the Bear and toward the Bull. Some were undoubtedly NCR troopers, perched at their hilltop outposts, but others seemed to be Legion scouts, charting their progress. Now and then, when a scope stayed trained on them a little too long, the Courier would hold aloft the token Caesar had delivered to him through Vulpes Inculta.

And he let the slimy bastard go, too, Boone sulked every time it was held up to catch the light. If I had been there, I would have popped his fucking head off right there on the Strip. Of course, he also realized that that was probably why the Courier typically left him behind in the Lucky 38, usually traveling with the girl instead, if he chose to bring backup at all. From what he had gathered from the young woman’s overly trusting ramblings, she was from somewhere secluded out in the Mojave, and didn’t have much of an opinion on any of the major factions in the area, which surely made things easier for the leader of their ragtag group.

“You’re brooding, Craig,” came a voice from his left, interrupting his thought. To the sharpshooter’s mild surprise, the Courier was smiling at him underneath his authority shades, Ratslayer on his back instead of in his hands. Why was he wearing those damn sunglasses at night? They made his eyes look like two dark pits in his face, in stark and eerie contrast with the yellowed shine of his teeth. “I’m impressed that you aren’t getting jumpy, keeping those eagle eyes of yours on the skyline for Legionaries.”

“I’m trained not to be jumpy,” Boone snapped back, “and there’s no point, is there? They know how to hide, and with you around, I’m safe as long as I don’t cause a Legion bloodbath.”

“Mmm.” Still the smile persisted, slowly irritating Boone further, until he couldn’t hold back any longer.

“What the fuck are you so smug about?”

“Smug? Not smug. This is like a vacation. The NCR, and the people in and around Vegas… they eat pre-war food, or farm Brahmin. But the Legion- the Legion lives off the land, and kills anything that’s left for practice. This is the safest place to be right now. No raiders, no deathclaws- no need to watch your back, here. It’s a nice change, Craig, don’t you think?”

Boone growled in response. He sure as hell planned on minding his six in these parts. There was no way he would ever consider Legion territory “safe.” He lingered on it a moment later before his frown deepened.

“Why do you call me Craig?” This time, it was the Courier who looked somewhat perplexed.

“It’s your name, isn’t it?”

“Everyone calls me Boone.”

“And here I thought we were on a first name basis.” The Courier let out a dramatic sigh, clearly hamming it up for sport. Boone didn’t play along, refusing to even humor him with a sidelong glance.

“It’s not a first name basis if I don’t know your name.”

“No, I suppose it’s not,” the other acquiesced, good spirits undampened.

* * *

“Halt!” cried out a male voice when they finally arrived in Cottonwood Cove, late in the night, or perhaps early in the morning. Boone stiffened as an elite Legionary scout ran up to them, rifle in hand. Behind him, three more men lingered, gingerly fingering their own weapons. “What are you doing here in Caesar’s land?”

“I was invited,” the Courier said calmly, if coldly. He held up the Mark, staring frigidly at the scout who had stopped him. Suddenly more cautious, the scout inspected the Mark from where he stood, then looked up to scrutinize the Courier’s face for a full minute before turning to glare at Boone, a crease between his eyebrows as if he had seen the sniper before, but couldn’t quite place where or when.

“My traveling companion,” said the Courier, drawing attention back to himself and effectively deflecting it from the NCR vet. “Now, if we could …”

They were led to a small raft moored at an old dock. It wasn’t much; just a few old chunks of wood barely attached in a way that they would float and bear weight. Standing next to it was a well tanned, heavily muscled Legionary who turned to glare at them as they approached.

“Are you ready to cross, Profligate? It is a long ride,” he warned, appraising the two strangers and their robotic hound.

“Yes, let’s get moving before the sun comes up,” the Courier replied evenly, staring distastefully up at the glow of daylight in the sky creeping above the canyon’s walls. ”With any luck we’ll arrive before we bake.”

* * *

The ride was long, as Cursor Lucullus had warned, and thoroughly unpleasant for Boone. He was stuck on a small raft with two men he detested: a dog for Caesar and a snake with his own hidden agenda. Perhaps fortunately, the huge Legionary wasn’t one for conversation with profligates, and the trip was made in silence, apart from the Courier’s occasional bout of soft satisfied humming as he laid back on the worn wood of the raft or dipped his hands into the sweet water of the Colorado. Boone recognized repeated snatches of “Big Iron.” He said nothing of it.

At long last, the towering ferryman spoke as a dock on the far shore drew nearer under the dark morning sky. Smoke rose from the rock they found themselves docked at, and even this early, there were noises of activity coming from within, and the smell of food cooking.

“We’ve arrived,” he announced, glancing warily between the faintly smiling Courier and the perpetually frowning sniper. The Courier’s smile had faded away by the time Lucullus tied off the raft and they stepped onto shore, however. Gone were the carefree moments of ensured safety; they were stepping back into danger.

Boone tried not to let his discomfort show as they came to a halt at the first gate. A handful of men in the Bull’s red tunics stood there next to a large crate, held shut with a padlock.

“No weapons or contraband are permitted in the Fort,” the Legionary in charge stated coldly as his subordinates closed in and began peeling weapons off the Courier, who simply spread his arms and let them. When two moved towards Boone, he instinctively reached for the 9 caliber pistol holstered at his side, but one look from the Courier made him freeze. Slowly, he drew the firearm, checked the safety, cleared the chamber, and passed it grip-first to the nearest Legionary, seething the whole time. The other Legionary pulled the strap of his rifle over his head. The Courier’s eyes never left him, even as they were both frisked. The meaning was clear; if he fucked this up, not only was Boone out of luck in his quest for revenge, but the Courier would personally see to it that the rest of his life would be short and unpleasant.

Satisfied that both men were suitably harmless, the gates were opened for them, and the Courier led the way through. The sniper grew increasingly edgy as they went, winding closer and closer to the heart of the camp. This wasn’t how he liked to see his enemies, so close and heavily armed while he was all but helpless. He much preferred the cover of a few hundred yards and some desert brush, with a nice set of crosshairs pasted over his target’s torso. He had never been trained for close-quarters combat, not on this scale. Maybe that was part of the reason the Courier brought him, though, if this whole escapade was meant to keep him safely leashed. The thought did little to soothe Boone’s nerves.

Along the way, a pair of boys bounded past them, panting as they trained for their inevitable fate as Legionaries, and something deep in Boone’s heart twisted unpleasantly. The Courier seemed unfazed, or perhaps he was simply distracted by the problem at hand. Slaves marked with red crosses and burdened with massive crates and packs hobbled behind them at a crawl, gasping with exertion. It could have been Carla staggering along the path, worn ragged with the strain.

Boone forced himself to look away.

They passed through a final gate, and Boone knew they were in the center of the Fort. Men in red surrounded them, rushing here and there with machetes and shotguns while more veteran soldiers in patchwork armor (claimed from the dead, Boone knew, and it set him on edge to see pieces of ranger armor mixed in with the scraps of fallen tribes) oversaw the goings-on. The air was full of noise; the grating whine of blades being sharpened against a grinding wheel, the shouting of sparring men, and the baying of mangy war hounds amidst the tents.

He glanced around as the Courier led them further inward, hand hovering over the comforting weight of the combat knife concealed beneath his waistband. No doubt the Courier had retained a few weapons of his own, as well. Not that their small arms would be any good against the force of Caesar’s vanguard.

They climbed a shallow stairway up the hill, to the tent sitting at its crest. A Legion cur standing guard at the door held up one hand, blocking their path.

“Halt. Only the Courier may pass.”

“Wait here, Craig,” the Courier said quickly and smoothly, dark eyes boring burning threats into the sniper should he consider abandoning the man here. I survived two shots to the head and being buried alive, that look said. I’ve killed more men than you can shake a stick at. I singlehandedly cleared Quarry Junction of deathclaws with a beat up secondhand rifle. Do you really think I’ll die nice and polite if you leave me here? No. I’ll just be extra pissed when I catch up with you.

The Courier vanished past the guard, slipping through the tent flaps with Rex panting at his heels, leaving Boone to kick at the dust outside. He waited a few minutes, standing in silence across from the guard. Both men cautiously eyed each other at first, eventually locking stares in an exercise of male dominance. It ended as a draw when a Praetorian emerged from the tent, setting off down the hillside at a jog. They watched him go, and then resumed staring at nothing.

Two minutes later, the Praetorian returned, a bundle in his arms. The butt of Ratslayer was visible sticking out from one end, and Boone’s eyebrows twitched. They were giving him his weapons back? In spite of himself, Boone was impressed. Untrustworthy and cruel he might be, but the Courier had a tongue of pure silver.

As if thoughts could summon the devil, the man himself came out of the tent a minute later, armed to the teeth. Once he had gotten past the guard, he shot a reptilian smile at his companion.

“I’ll be another half hour or so,” the man said, as if he was just headed out to pick up the groceries. “I have… business, elsewhere in the camp. Just amuse yourself until I return, hm?” As the Courier walked away, he called back: “And play nice!”

Boone stood around for another couple minutes, then spat into the dirt and began walking off himself. Fuck if he was going to stand up here like he and the guard were buddies. Grimacing, Boone stepped away from the tent flap and its mohawked guard to instead wander the premises, in search of a quiet place where he wouldn't have to watch deluded savages gearing up to kill good men. He grew more irritable as he went; the damn fort was set up too efficiently, ready to hold off an invasion at a moment's notice should the NCR kick in the gate without announcement. Behind tents were more tents, open to the air, and Legionaries everywhere. And where there were no soldiers, there were slaves, and many of them, hauling fresh water and pisspots and armfuls of firewood. These were no easier to look at. And everyone looked at him, eyes narrowed and vicious beneath elaborate helmets and behind visors and goggles.

He wandered off in the Courier's footsteps. Half an hour, he had said. Well, any longer than a half an hour, and Boone might start cutting his way out of this mess with his combat knife just to put his itchy fingers to work.

He passed a Howitzer. An honest to god Howitzer. His steps faltered for a moment; he hadn't expected to see such heavy weaponry on this end of the dam. Concerned, his eyes darted for any hint of artillery shells, or perhaps a sign that the gun was out of order. Nothing presented itself. Rattled, he moved on.

This wing of the camp was quieter. Large tents lined the corrugated steel wall erected to the south, and to the north was another cluster of infantry tents. Brahmin grunted nearby, and he could smell their manure mixing with the general stench of a war camp. There was also a small training ground there, with a few legionnaires dripping sweat into the dust as they did pushups, and a few more swinging machetes at dummies or each other. The blades they used, he noticed, seemed to be fully sharpened. If you were slow enough to be struck in training, apparently you deserved to suffer your injuries. He hoped they were slow.

Behind it all stood a small building, clearly pre-war. Was this what the Courier had dragged him all this way for? It seemed too tiny to hold anything of real value. Then again, there were guards at the door, and Caesar himself seemed to want the Courier to do something about it, if the crazy old man was willing to give the Courier his weapons back.

He strayed a bit too close to the door, and the guards lifted their rifles in warning. He stepped back, still staring. Yeah, there was something in there. Something important.

The ground suddenly rumbled beneath him, and he broadened his stance for stability, peering nervously over the ramshackle walls to the dam, visible through the haze of day. Was a battle beginning? Or had something happened to upset the rocks below the fort, ready to cast the Legion into the Colorado and bury them under several tons of rubble? He remembered the earthquakes of his youth back in the NCR, and how they shook down buildings and split the earth. Did they get earthquakes this far east? The legionnaires were just as disturbed as Boone was, frantically taking up arms and calling to each other in their dead tongue while searching for an enemy to cleave.

The shaking stopped several seconds after it had started. The fort was uncharacteristically quiet for a full minute as all troops listened, fingers wrapped tight around machetes. Dogs barked ferociously nearby, ruining the silence but lending to the uneasy air. No messengers came running and screaming of enemies at the gates, however, and slowly, the men around him resumed their activities, if with less abandon.

The guarded door of the small building opened, and the Courier emerged. He seemed unruffled as he handed his weapons back to one of the guards, and when he saw Boone, he strode easily over.

"Well, that's that," the man murmured.

"Can we leave?"

"Not yet. Have to talk to Caesar." He used the hard C, though his voice was kept low. "If I am overly long or you hear anything suspect, you have my permission to tear the fucker's throat out." This was said even more quietly, little more than a growl in the depths of the Courier's throat, but his face remained composed. "If I die, the Mojave dies with me."

"Threats?"

"Facts."

Boone scowled as he shadowed the Courier back to Caesar's tent, and resumed his post outside, clenching and unclenching his hands. Just a layer of canvas lied between him and Caesar. He looked over the walls to the nearby cliffs, and his frown deepened when he realized the cresting walls that stood over the river still sat lower than Caesar's tent. It would be impossible to snipe him where he sat unless somebody stirred up a vertibird, fitted it with a giant stealth boy, and flew it out in the heart of a storm. Not terribly likely, and even if it could happen, even the best sniper would have a hell of a time landing the shot. Easier to lay waste to the fort with a minigun from the hypothetical vertibird, or more realistically, rain mortars on them with the howitzers on the far side of the dam.

Still, the distance was too great for any sort of accuracy, especially as there were no real Howitzer experts outside Boomer territory, and even a fuckwit like Caesar could survive a shelling if he were lucky or found cover on the far side of the fort. And that was if the howitzers could even hit the fort from where they sat. He wasn't sure of their range. No, a surgical strike from the inside would probably work, if any soldier with the balls could get this far without being gutted or strung up on an old telephone pole for the vultures to pick at.

Boone was probably the first NCR soldier to lay eyes on the inside of the main gates without his hands bound and a red X on his chest. And he had the balls. If he were quick and quiet, he could take out the Praetorian guard that still stood before him, watching with stony eyes, and use the bastard's own machete to separate his god-king's head from his shoulders before the rest of the monster's guard would have time to react...

He was trying to mentally gauge the distance from the tent entrance to where Caesar probably sat and pondering how many guards would come in the way when the Courier emerged once more, his robotic death hound close behind. He jerked his scarred and pitted head to the side, beckoning, and set a quick and steady pace towards the front gate. Boone fell in behind him after one last wistful, calculating look at the tent that hid his target from him.

Next time.

* * *

They had barely emerged from Cottonwood Cove and left the Legion in the dust when the grin the Courier had been developing for the past twenty minutes burst into cold, gleeful laughter. Boone took a wary step away from the man, disturbed.

"What an old fool he is, Craig!" The Courier cackled a few moments longer, then wiped the mirth from his eyes, his shades pushed bouncing on his knuckles at his forehead. "The fucker presumes too much and trusts too easily. And to think he could have ruined it all if he only had the cajones!"

"What?"

"The Vault. The Vault and the weapon." The Courier let out another chilly huff of laughter. "It was marked with the Lucky 38's symbol. He couldn't get in without the chip, and once he had it, he couldn't send one of his own because they know fuck-all about computers and exposing them to anything down there might poison the well, convince them tech is alright." He was openly grinning again; his exposed teeth were jagged, stained, and reminded Boone all too much of a Deathclaw's maw. "If he had the balls, he would have gone down that hole himself to deal with what was waiting."

"But instead he sent you," the sniper said, catching on, and blinking at Caesar's stupidity to actually trust this creature masquerading as human.

"That he did, Craig. And he sealed his fate the moment he gave me a gun and sent me in alone." His face twisted suddenly, vicious and cruel. "If he had any brains at all between the prongs of his fucking wreath, he would have sent his pet dog down and barred the door behind him."

"Didn't realize you hated the fucking fox so much." It wasn't an unpleasant surprise, but Boone's approval was swiftly interrupted.

"I never said I do, Craig." Those intense, muddy eyes were focused sharply on Boone, then, and there was nothing jovial about his companion now. "He is very much like me. And like you. Ah-ah," he tutted as Boone made a noise of disgust and dismissal and turned away, trying to end the conversation. "You may not like it, but there it is. He is a man devoted to his people. He is loyal to a fault. He believes in the Legion, Craig, just as you believe in the NCR, but does he believe in Caesar Primo?"

The Courier had closed in on Boone as they walked and was staring relentlessly at him, mouth slightly open, searching as he worried at the trenches of his premolars with his tongue. The veteran ground his teeth, ignoring the intrusion and pretending the Courier wasn't close enough to rend flesh with those feral teeth. After a moment, the nameless man fell back, becoming impassively bland once more.

"No, Craig, Vulpes-" Soft V, long U. "-is fascinating, but Caesar-" Soft C. "-is a fool to trust him so implicitly. Him or the beast he named Legate." His nose wrinkled faintly with apparent disgust. "Indoctrination doesn't work on those who have known different," he growled almost inaudibly as an afterthought.

The conversation seemed to leave him in an inexplicably darker mood, or at least a more pensive one. He didn't speak to Boone again until he continued westward at Searchlight instead of turning northward.

"We need to go to Camp Golf," the sniper reminded the Courier, who looked at him blankly for a moment, uncomprehending. "My beret."

"Ah. Of course." To Boone's confusion, the Courier stopped in the road, swinging his pack off his shoulder to dig through it. After a moment, he pulled out a 1st Recon beret, and tossed it at Boone. "There. Beret retrieved."

Boone glowered, truly pissed.

"You had it the whole time."

"Of course. Couldn't have you waltzing into Cottonwood Cove like that, could I?"

"I'm not an idiot," Boone spat, shaking the grit from the beret before putting it on. The Courier watched him with strange focus, pondering.

"No. No, you're not. But you are sentimental." He blinked, one eye a fraction of a second behind the other. "I couldn't risk everything on your fashion choices." The Courier shrugged his pack back on, and led ever westward. "Business in Primm, and then it's up to McCarran through Quarry Junction. If you're going to complain, I recommend you get it out of your system before we start running into giant reptiles."

"You're a fucking piece of shit," Boone snapped. "A fucking evil, selfish piece of shit."

"And yet you still stick around. What's that say about you, Boone, hm? What's that say about you?"


	4. Chapter 4

The Courier picked up a strange radio signal one day.

The Follower had been there when the signal came in. The Courier had been fiddling with his PipBoy radio outside of Nelson after a backhanded blow to a Jackal's jaw had abruptly replaced “Big Iron” with static.

Now, a woman's sultry voice filtered through the tinny speakers, welcoming, inviting. But the Sierra Madre was just a legend, Gannon insisted when he had arrived back at the Lucky 38 alone. The Courier was chasing an urban legend; the radio signal was probably just a joke, or a promotion for a new casino in Reno or something, right?

This he asked Boone as they both leaned against the railing outside the cocktail lounge. Boone clutched a rifle in his hands, taking pot shots at giant rodents on one side of Vegas' walls and Fiends on the other, occasionally reaching down to the ammo crate at his side for a fresh clip or a swig of the now warm beer that sat beside it. An unlit cigarette hung from his mouth. The unpredictable gusts up here would snuff it out in a moment if he tried lighting it.

Gannon, in contrast, was uneasily pacing the curved balcony, hands fidgeting and tapping against the handrail. He flinched slightly every time Boone squeezed off a shot; even with a suppressor, the concussion shook the very air. Off in the distance, a man's head exploded, and the rest of his band panicked and scattered like roaches in the sunlight.

"Don't you think that's strange, though? Six might be absolutely insane, but he's never been, well. Greedy. Why would he chase after some modern El Dorado?"

Boone grunted in acknowledgment, but offered nothing more. He took aim on a pale woman wearing a Brahmin skull on her head, but the shot missed, soaring past her and burying itself deep into the overturned carcass of an automobile.

Gannon sighed, anxiously carded a hand through his hair, and slumped onto the rail.

"What if he doesn't come back? I'm not sure the Legion can be stopped without him. I hate to say it, but the man's got influence."

Boone gave Gannon a scourging look, finally leaning his rifle against the 38's window and pulling out his lighter. He turned his back to the breeze, cupped a hand over his cigarette, and tried for a long while to light it before giving up with a muttered curse.

"The NCR can take the Legion."

"Can they though, Boone?" Gannon almost looked his age as he peered down at the Strip. "The Legion has numbers, and blind loyalty that most Republic soldiers just don't have. For the NCR, this is a job. Something to get them onto the Strip, or to give them money to send back west to their families. Most of them signed on because it was the only way they could earn a living. The Legion, though- this is living for them. They live to kill and conquer, and they will gladly die if it brings Caesar one step closer to holding the Mojave." He looked up at Boone, and saw the malcontent with the direction of the one sided conversation on his face. "Oh, open your eyes, Boone! Do you really see any way this can end well without Six's hand? He managed more in a month on his own than the entire NCR has in a year."

It was true... but he wasn't convinced that the Courier was going to play his cards in anyone's favor but his own. He couldn't be trusted. The sniper's perpetual frown deepened, and he picked up his rifle again, silently dismissing Gannon.

"Yeah, good talk, Boone." The Follower gave him an unreadable look before he turned away, heading back inside.

Boone set his crosshairs on a Fiend who had finally crawled out of hiding to scavenge what she could off the corpse of one of his previous hits, and pulled the trigger.

* * *

Weeks passed with no word. It was mostly the same to Boone; he was rarely invited along with the Courier and was used to the solitude of his sniper nest on the 38's spire. There were whispers on the Strip and beyond, though, that the Courier was dead in a ditch somewhere, or held captive by one army or another, even that he had broken under the stress and fled.

But then there were sudden rumors that he was back, rumors whispered by traveling merchants and soldiers back from long patrols, and both the NCR and Legion hastily snatched back the fingers they had been stretching tentatively toward New Vegas.

The Courier's crew didn't know what to expect when the elevator "ding"ed as it arrived at the Presidential Suite, though their entire company (now including a redheaded drunk Boone vaguely recognized from his tour of duty) was present and accounted for.

The door opened. Yes Man's face flickered to replace the Securitron's, and he cheerily announced the floor. The gathered team hovered in doorways. Boone fished a 9mm handgun from its holster, Veronica hovering behind him, cracking her knuckles uneasily. A glance across the entrance hall showed the ghoul and the caravaneer had gotten the same idea.

The Courier stepped out of the elevator, a changed man. A tired man.

The upper half of his face was red and raw but for the area around his expressionless eyes, in the shape of goggles. There were chafe marks at his throat, similar but different, and partially hidden by a respirator dangling there. His head was freshly and cleanly shaved; neat red scars curved across his scalp and vanished down his neck, under his clothes. Strange weapons hung from various straps and holsters; one was an imposing custom rifle, another some sort of flare-muzzled energy weapon. One had a brain attached. A thermic lance cast a violet glow over one shoulder, and a similar blue long axe illuminated the other. He had abandoned his leather armor somewhere for what seemed to be some sort of sleek black stealth suit accented with white stripes.

He stood motionless outside the elevator for a full minute, surveying the dark rooms and those that still held guns on him. Those flat, hungry eyes fixed on Veronica in particular, and then Boone saw. He hadn't changed at all, beyond the superficial. Something of his facade had simply been worn away, revealing stripes of the thing that lurked beneath. Something had happened, something that shouldn't have. Veronica stared back, transfixed.

"Where were you?" Gannon asked at last, daring to lower his laser pistol.

"Hunting." The man's voice was rough and hoarse, as if he had been breathing sand and grit.

"Hunting what?" Boone asked this, drawing the Courier's attention.

"A memory. A name." He looked back at Veronica. "You. We need to talk."

"I know that rifle," Veronica whispered, eyes wide, and she shoved past Boone.

"You haven't been entirely honest with me," grated the Courier, finally moving, opening the door to the master bedroom and ushering the girl inside. As the door swung shut, Boone heard "Now tell me everything you know about Elijah."

* * *

Veronica emerged an hour or so later. Her eyes were red and puffy, and she refused to tell the others what they had talked about, except that it had brought her closure on more than one subject.

Several minutes later, the door opened again. This time, a radio was hurled out of the room with a crash. Its innards were still skittering across the floor when the door closed again.

"What the fuck!" Cass yelled, emerging from the kitchen with a bottle in hand, just as Raul spouted a startled "¿Qué hace?" and poked his head out from the communal bathroom. Boone came out to investigate too; he just shook his head, as confused as any of them. They turned to Veronica again, who shrugged, bewildered. There were more grumbled curses in English and Spanish alike, and slowly, all went back to their own tasks.

The Courier was back. It was enough. It had to be.

* * *

The door didn't open again for a full seventeen hours, and when it did, it was at Boone's hand.

The Courier was curled tightly on the bed, sitting upright against the headboard. His stealth suit had been unzipped to his waist and peeled back to show that the scars stretched down over his sternum, that his ribs were black with new bruises where they weren't green and yellow with old ones.

There was a gun in his hand. Maria. Another at his side, only ever referred to as That Gun.

His eyes snapped open. Boone froze for a second, then stepped further inside and closed the door behind him.

"Mind where you step," the Courier growled unblinkingly, and Boone looked down in time to see the new weapons laid out neatly on the floor.

"The fuck happened to you?" Boone questioned, remaining behind the neat rows with his arms crossed.

"I was hunting a Frumentarius," he replied eventually.

"The fox?"

"A Courier. Like me... and not like me." His face twitched strangely, and there was suddenly fire in his voice. "There were missiles, Craig. I could have beleaguered the Mojave until the earth cracked and the canyons were choked with the dust of dead men. I could have wiped the board clean, could have made it as though the NCR and the Legion never existed, could have crushed New Vegas, I could have-"

He broke off abruptly when he noticed the sudden blankness on Boone's face. He reigned himself in. The spark was stamped out, and the Courier was cold again.

"-But I didn't, Craig." He made eye contact with the sniper. "I disabled them. I canceled the launch that Ulysses started. The bombs are dead in the ground, now."

"Why are you doing this?" Boone breathed. "Why are you doing any of this? What's your stake in the Mojave?"

"I live here," the Courier replied simply. He lifted his arm, pointing Maria at the sniper. "Now, if you would kindly show yourself out."

He did, and as the elevator took him up to his nest, he found himself pondering ways to kill the Courier without destroying the connections he had made. It wouldn't be easy. He would need to convince them that the Courier had placed his trust in Boone implicitly, that he would want the sniper to continue his work well in the event of his death. But would anyone buy it?

The doctor was standing at the railings again when Boone got there, and it did little to improve his mood.

"What did you find out?" the man asked as Boone wordlessly unzipped the huge duffle he kept up there and drew out his rifle.

"He said he was looking for a Legion spy. He said he stopped a missile launch."

"You don't believe him, though."

"You do?" Boone laughed incredulously. "He shows up looking like... that, after weeks of nothing. You said he went looking for a casino, he says he went looking for a Legion bastard." He lifted his rifle to his shoulder, and began searching the distant landscape for something to kill. "Can't believe you fucks actually trust him."

“None of us trust him,” Gannon said sharply. Boone’s eyes flickered over to him behind the tinted glass of his shades. “Well, Lily doesn’t know better. But the rest of us…”

Boone said nothing. There was really nothing for him to say.

“You need to give us more credit,” the blond man continued, his voice a dark mutter. “Cass is a drunk, sure, and Raul is old and jaded, and Veronica is sheltered, and I’m just an eccentric scientist with a knack for putting my foot in my mouth. But none of us are stupid. And frankly, we’ve all been through just as much shit as you, if not more.”

Still, Boone didn’t speak, and they sat there for a moment in uncomfortable silence before Arcade opened his mouth again, quiet and hesitant, forehead wrinkled and eyes downcast.

“You know, I think… I think I saw…” At his trepidation, Boone finally looked over.

“Saw what?”

“We… were clearing a Legion camp. It was a big one, and I had said that maybe we should hang back. He just gave me this look. You know…feral. Focused. And he was smiling, Boone, but it wasn’t a smile so much as he was baring his teeth at me. And then he just took aim with his rifle and blew the head off of a sleeping Legionary. There were a dozen of them up and about, standing guard and watching prisoners, but he shot the one sleeping man he had a clear shot at, and laughed about it.”

Gannon paused, and sucked in an uneven breath.

“By then, of course, there were so many Legionaries rushing at us, throwing spears and waving knives, and I was just doing what I could to stay alive. It was chaos. I don’t know if you understand, being a sniper. You sit at a distance, take out men without ever seeing their faces or having them on top of you with a weapon. I was in the middle of a horde of red, and there were blades coming from every direction, and it’s a miracle I’m alive because Six sure as hell wasn’t fighting alongside me. I looked for him, trying to find where he was, trying to see if he could help me, and I saw him crouched over a wounded Legionary, and I think… I think he was eating him. Eating him alive. There was blood all over his face, and the Legionary was screaming, and he was leaning over him. And, oh God, the blood… And he looked right at me. He smiled. An honest-to-God smile as he watched half a dozen Legionaries try to tear me to pieces, like it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen.”

The Follower had somehow gone even more pale, and looked like he was going to vomit. The sniper didn’t know what to say, only gaped. He knew the Courier was bad news… but a cannibal? Not even just a cannibal. The people at the Ultra Luxe were cannibals. The Courier was a wild animal, a predator, a maneater. He ate his quarry, living or dead, beast or human, simply because it was his.

“Sometimes I can half convince myself it was a trick my mind played on me,” Arcade added, a little more steadily. “That I was just panicked and high on adrenaline and that he was just fighting for his life like I was. But then there are other times when I know better, know that I saw what I saw.” He glared pointedly at Boone. “I know better than anyone what kind of monster Six is. I don’t like him, and I certainly don’t trust him, but somehow, he’s actually doing good in the world. He’s making New Vegas a better, safer place. So if I have to put up with him to facilitate a better future, then that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. And if I have to kill him before it goes back to shit again and then praise him as a fallen hero, then I’ll do that too. We aren’t doing favors for each other. It’s a precarious exchange of services, as I’m sure it is with the others, and with you. So I would appreciate it if you would kindly stop acting like a complete ass towards us when we’re all on the same page.”

"...Sure," Boone said at last. "Yeah."

"Good." Gannon began to turn away, but then he hesitated. "If I know Six, he's going to make rounds with all the factions soon. Remind them he's still here, and that he's watching. It couldn't hurt to have a scope on him, see what he does when he thinks nobody's watching." The Follower shrugged, and with no small mount of sarcasm, finished, "But what do I know, I'm just a washed up doctor, right?"


	5. Chapter 5

Vulpes first met him in Nipton. The last of the profligates had been hoisted onto their crucifixes and the lottery's "winner" had been set loose to spread the word and the fear when there was suddenly a gunshot. All Legion men turned sharply toward the report; a body fell on the main road, and another man lowered his gun calmly, nudged the body with one toe, and dispassionately left him to rot in the dust.

"Sir, that was the messenger," one man told him in low tones. Vulpes held his ground at the city hall, watching the stranger move slowly his way, pausing to investigate the burnt heaps of corpses.

"And a new messenger comes. Mars dictated, and Mercury provides," Vulpes replied calmly. The man had paused below one of the crucified, and was now doing something to his feet. The profligate tied to the beams shrieked, and the stranger replied with greater force. Vulpes could see now; there was a knife in the man's right hand. His left was flicking bits of something to the ground. It clicked in his mind; the man was skinning the dying profligate’s soles. The Frumentarius watched silently, wondering if this stranger had a vendetta, or if he was simply bloodthirsty.

The stranger approached. His head was shaved, revealing a nasty scabbed wound. His clothing was makeshift, anonymous, and the common rifle on his back was worn with use.

"You're Legion," the stranger said just as Vulpes opened his mouth. He closed it, and turned his head a fraction. "Frumentarius."

"You are knowledgeable, profligate," Vulpes stated dryly, half in mockery.

"Profligate? Maybe. Maybe not. I am a Courier. Who can ever really tell, with Couriers?" The man was eying his small force with his flat brown eyes. Vulpes decided he didn't care for the man's attitude.

"You will carry one more message from here, Courier," Vulpes commanded. "You will tell the New California Republic what you've seen. You will tell them the horrors that are coming for them."

"I'm looking for a man," the stranger said out of the blue, as if he had not heard. "A man with a Legion name. A courier. A Frumentarius." Vulpes' men watched their leader carefully, waiting for the command to end the man's life.

Vulpes narrowed his eyes behind his dark goggles. The courier stared easily back at him. The knife was still in his hand, blade stained red. The blood darkened as it dried visibly in the Mojave sun.

"A man named Ulysses. Do you know him?" At Vulpes' deliberate silence, the man smiled. "I have no quarrel with the Legion. I will spread your message. But I would much appreciate it if you would point me in his direction." The smile broadened into something that was a smile no longer. This is not a man, Vulpes thought. He didn't know what he was, but this was abnormal.

"Take the message and leave," Vulpes commanded at last, and the friendly charade dropped, his features becoming darker, sharper.

"You know him, Frumentarius, and I will find him, wherever he hides himself. I lay my claim. He is mine."

The man turned and retreated down the long road. He ignored the cries of the crucified. He vanished into the rippling heat.

He remained quietly unseen for a month, but not forgotten.

* * *

He was in the Fort, and he was tearing the foreleg off of Antony's prize bitch. The houndmaster was howling and pacing on the sidelines like the beasts he tended. He had never expected some profligate trader capable of such violence. He had expected the man's guts strewn in the dirt, his flesh to feed Lupa. Instead, Lupa yelped her pain helplessly as the man tore at her flesh with hands and teeth. Mottled fur stuck to the blood on his face and arms. Legionaries watched as the leg was finally severed, and the dog writhed on the ground. The man snarled laughter at her, tossed her leg aside, and planted a boot on her side.

"Stop it," Antony muttered frantically from outside, circling. "Stop it, stop it." The arena's appeal was ruined when such cruelty was wasted on a mongrel, and even the other men still watching were no longer amused.

"End it," a few yelled through the gaps in the wall. "Just kill the cur and be done with it."

The man growled at their impatience, glaring at them in turn before looking back down at the dog. It had stopped moving when he wasn't looking. Already, flies gathered in her eyes and nostrils. Nose wrinkled back with anger, he swung a boot viciously into the dog's side, and Antony winced where he stood. Then the man finally took the machete from his belt, and cleaved the head from her body. Gripping it by the fur of the neck, he carried it still twitching from the arena. If he saw Vulpes watching him throughout the ordeal, he did not acknowledge him.

* * *

The next time was on the Strip. The Courier had been making ripples, had been talking to people and silencing others, and Vulpes thought it prudent to inform Lord Caesar of the man. He had not expected to be sent out with an invitation. And yet, Caesar commanded. He went.

He caught up with the Courier outside of the Tops. The man was drenched in blood, already tacky where it stained his face and hands. The stench of leather, sweat, and copper rolled off him in waves. Strands of dark muscle were caught in his jagged teeth, and he sneered as he tried to work them out with his tongue and grimy fingernails. There were no dogs on the Strip. Was his prey human, this time, Vulpes wondered? The Chairmen watched him carefully enough from the doors, horror in their eyes, and the gamblers steered well clear of him, but the Securitrons did nothing. The blonde man at his side was pale as the moon, and seemed close to vomiting.

Vulpes approached. He was dressed to blend in, but he was uncomfortably aware that he stuck out like a sore thumb as the only one bold enough to approach the Courier.

The man recognized him, and grinned, an echo of what he had seen in Nipton.

"I see you, Vulpes." He pronounced his name properly. It was almost unsettling. "Have you come to tell me where he is? I'm ever so eager to see him again."

"I come to deliver a message," Vulpes said warily, fishing for the Mark in an inside pocket.

"So you are the courier, now? Am I Frumentarius?" The man's expression wavered from cold mirth to uncertainty, before solidifying once again so quickly that it might not have happened at all. "I met one of yours. He wouldn't speak to me about his brothers. All I wanted was a location, but he was... difficult."

Alerio had been found by a scouting party two days earlier, dead where he had been bound bleeding to a post in fire gecko territory. There was little left of him, at least below the chest, where the lizards could reach.

"...You are invited to Fortification Hill. Caesar would speak to you. Go to Cottonwood Cove and seek out Cursor Lucullus. He will deliver you." He held out the Mark, and the Courier took it. Blood smeared on Vulpes' hand, and he pretended it did not bother him.

"I will find him, Vulpes," the Courier called after him. "Your silence will not protect your wayward brother!"

Vulpes ignored him, and forced himself not to look over his shoulder as he retreated.

* * *

He researched the Courier's companions. He was surprised to learn that the mess in the arena had purpose beyond bloodshed, and that a hound formerly Legion now walked in his shadow with a fresh new brain. Whether it was a good sign or not, Vulpes could not decide.

The blonde man was a doctor, stolen from Freeside with promises of more. He was weak. He was perverted, with the proclivities of a woman. The man was no real threat.

The girl he kept was of the Brotherhood. She thought she kept quiet, but the fox ever listens. He heard her speak of her people falling, dying out, and he passed this news on to Caesar.

The ghoul was an abomination, some old world monster born of falling bombs in a land to the south. He did not hate the Legion. It would be easy to put him down, when the time came. He would not expect the fatal blow until it was upon him.

There was also a supermutant, more monstrous yet. A lumbering beast, loud, simple, and obnoxiously difficult to overcome in a fight. It would have to be taken down quickly. He made notes to ensure that miniguns were kept on hand.

And then there was the sniper. Craig Boone, of the 1st Recon. The sniper he watched most carefully. He no longer fought for the Bear, but did he follow them still? Vulpes suspected yes. And yet... and yet, he saw the worry on his face when he trailed behind the Courier, and how his fingers twitched for a knife when the Courier moved too quickly. The sniper could no more trust the Courier than Vulpes himself.

It seemed important, but this information he kept to himself.

* * *

The Courier returned to the Fort some time later. Vulpes had been busy, could almost forget the man from time to time. He had flooded Searchlight with radiation, and had been organizing the absorption of the Khans into the Legion.

And yet, he knew the day would come when the Courier would appear before Caesar. He simply didn't know what the man would do.

He came. He stood before Caesar, but his eyes turned to Vulpes, and his eyes were cold.

Caesar listed his many offenses against the Legion. The Courier listed just as many offenses he had committed against the NCR in return.

Caesar demanded he prove his loyalty. The Courier smiled when the son of Mars told him of the building, of the vault, and of the platinum chip.

He left. The earth shook. He returned.

"Is it done?" Caesar asked.

"It is," the man replied.

Caesar ordered him to kill House, and the man nodded.

"I was wondering if I might ask a favor," the Courier said before leaving. "I'm looking for a man. A man named Ulysses. He is yours?"

"Perhaps," Caesar responded, popping an olive into his mouth.

"Where is he?"

"Kill House," Caesar repeated, "and I'll consider rewarding you with that information."

The man nodded and left.

"You cannot trust him," Vulpes murmured to his leader.

"Shut the fuck up, Vulpes," Caesar replied with a cruel smile.

"...Yes, my lord."

* * *

He followed the Courier, when his schedule allowed. He traced him from one end of the Mojave to the other, in endless circuits between towns and factions. And then, one day, he vanished from a bunker.

Vulpes had explored it after the third or fourth day of staking it out, wondering if perhaps the Courier had finally been killed. The bunker was largely empty; there were a few bunks and scattered signs of habitation and subsequent abandonment- motheaten blankets, bottles of alcohol covered in dust- as well as a radio knocked to the floor and a locked room he couldn't enter. When he pressed his ear to the door, he could hear nothing on the other side but the faint electrical hum that pervaded the entire structure. He left the bunker, and resumed his duties elsewhere.

A few days later, he happened upon the Courier again. The man moved alone across the wastes, without stopping in towns to speak or resupply. He killed a gecko, tore through its thick hide with his knife, and ate its flesh raw.

He followed him to an asphalt lot filled with cars and what looked like a fallen satellite, and could not find him again.

He was still in the area when a beam of light appeared in the sky, and the Courier reappeared again. He wore new clothes and carried new weapons. These he stowed in a hollowed out rock on the road; when Vulpes searched it, he found strange technologies he had never seen before. He left them, so as not to let the Courier know he was followed.

The Courier led him to canyon wreckage, and at last he realized that Ulysses had been found.

The Courier went in, and Vulpes waited. None had ever returned from the Divide before.

The Courier returned, and in his hands, he bore the flag of the old world. This he drove into the cracked earth at the funnel of the wreckage, and on top, he impaled a head. Giant coyotes shoved and nosed around him, eager to lap at the congealed blood. Its braided hair rattled against the metal post like a warning to wayward travelers, but Vulpes knew what it was. The Courier cared nothing for the safety of those who might press on. He was territorial, and the Divide belonged to him.

Vulpes grew concerned.


	6. Chapter 6

Boone sat in the nest he had build above Cottonwood Cove. His sights were set on the Courier, traveling alone well below. The man was talking to some of the Legion men, circling a slave pen like a lakelurk. It was discomforting. Too much like Carla. Too familiar, and still too painful.

The Courier moved on, speaking to the bastard piloting the raft at the docks. He only lowered his rifle when they shoved off into the open water and vanished upstream.

"Did you know," a smooth, mild voice sounded suddenly from behind him, "that your Courier murdered the Brotherhood of Steel in their own bunker not two weeks ago and framed the NCR? This was a few days before you started tailing him."

Boone spun around, drawing his pistol. Vulpes stood several feet away, his own handgun trained steadily on the sniper.

"And not long before that, he killed the Fiends in Vault 3 and left signs for the survivors outside that it was the work of the Legion." The two men stared at each other. Neither lowered their weapon.

"Why the fuck should I believe you? And what do I care if the Legion gets pinned with a massacre? You do it enough that being blamed with one more shouldn't hurt your fucking feelings," Boone spat.

Vulpes finally let his arm drop to his side, holstering his gun. He took a few steps forward to watch the activity in the camp below.

"I've been watching him... and so have you. Do you trust him?" the Frumentarius asked, locking his hands together behind his back and looking inquisitively over at the 1st Recon man.

"I should blow your fucking head off."

"If you were going to, you would have already," Vulpes replied in his inflectionless voice. "Do you trust the Courier?" Boone was silent. "You would be a fool to. And therein lies my point."

"The point being?"

"That the Courier is not a man to be trusted. Not by the Legion or the NCR. And not by his companions. Do you suppose he told the scribe girl that her people suffocated on chemical weapons behind remotely locked doors in their bunker, or will she only find out when she wanders back home one day?"

"Veronica- the Brotherhood?" Boone slowly lowered his gun as the gears turned in his head. "Fuck," he finally said. "Fuck!"

Vulpes hummed in agreement.

"And he's been picking off my Frumentarii with prejudice." A hint of anger showed itself in his tone. "Alerio, Gabban... and Ulysses." He turned his icy gaze on Boone once more. "He isn't on your side, Craig Boone. He's not on mine. He is out for himself, but what does he want? He is... heathen. Inhuman."

"Yeah, I fucking noticed," Boone grumbled. Both brooded for a moment on the thought, until Vulpes spoke again.

"I have a proposal."

"No."

"Hear it," Vulpes hissed, and Boone gave him his sullen attention. "When it comes to the battle for the dam- and it soon will, we both know it- turn your sights to the Courier. Not Caesar, not the Legate, and not me. Doom does not come for you from the east. It lives in New Vegas, pretending to be man. Neither of us will succeed if the Courier stands. He's a free agent that needs to be put down."

"...You haven't run this past Caesar, have you?" Boone sneered, and Vulpes' frown was answer enough. "If you think that, then why haven't you killed him already?"

"The same reason you haven't. We cannot conquer the Mojave while he stands... but neither will we win if he falls too soon. His influence is... suprisingly expansive." Vulpes moved quietly out of the sparse cover of the sniper's nest. "Abandon this post. You were foolish to return to it at all after you killed your wife."

"Fuck you," Boone growled after him, but he didn't bother to raise his gun.

* * *

The Courier arrived back at the dock at Cottonwood Cove with Cursor Lucullus while Vulpes was waiting for the raft to head upriver himself.

"I found him," the Courier said with a mild smile. "I told you I would."

"I had no doubt," Vulpes replied honestly, ignoring the Cursor's curious gaze. The Courier leaned in suddenly, his sharp teeth and sharp eyes uncomfortably close to the Frumentarius' face.

"I met the Legate some time ago. I never did mention."

"And I'm sure Lanius found you quite relatable." Vulpes moved to board the raft, but the Courier shifted sideways with him.

"Not Lanius." Vulpes met the Courier's eyes, mud and ice locked. "He claimed himself a man reborn under the good graces of his kind and merciful god." The dark eyes flicked vaguely downward at the Legion spy's hands, and then returned almost instantly to his eyes. "Did you light the torch yourself, Vulpes? Did you burn him for the souls of your kin?"

"I serve Caesar," Vulpes said. "Do not project yourself onto me."

"Familia supra omnia, Vulpes. You cannot lie to me. I know better." The Courier finally drew back in a quick, sharp motion. "The Legate was hardened by your fires like iron, but I could see the fissures in him. I always can. I broke him, Vulpes. Do you know how?"

"Is he dead?" the Frumentarius dared to ask, carefully neutral. It would allay Caesar's concerns, and would end the rumors, he told himself. It had nothing to do with a hidden grudge decades old, buried in time and training.

"I showed him the truth. He has changed, yes, but you can never turn back time." The last traces of his smile faded, leaving his face grim and disturbingly earnest. "Joshua Graham died with the rise of the Malpais Legate, but what then was born of his burnt out shell?" One more feral grin flitted apprehensively across his marred features, and the Courier finally backed off. "...Vale, Frumentarius."

The man-creature nodded a goodbye, more flippant than respectful, and Vulpes did nothing.

When he arrived at the Fort later, he would learn that the Courier had killed Mr. House some days before. Caesar would flip him a copy of the obituary the man had composed for himself with a laugh, snarking that the Courier got results so quickly and quietly, perhaps he should replace Vulpes as the head of his Frumentarii.

"I could not recommend it, my lord," Vulpes replied in his usual muted tones, and Caesar just laughed at him and casually reassured him that his post was secure, and he should work on extracting the stick from his ass.

Still, concern gnawed at him for the rest of the night. If Ulysses was dead, then what was the Courier gunning for now?

* * *

"Was he once Frumentari?" Vulpes would impulsively ask Caesar one slow afternoon when his tent was largely empty, but for the guard.

"Who?"

"The Courier. Before me." It would answer many questions, and raise many more.

"Fuck," Caesar replied as he thought back. "No. No, I'd remember."

But his words meant nothing, really. Caesar had many headaches these days, many hazy, hanging moments where his eyes would glaze over and words would be slurred. There were whispers of brain disease, voiceless mouthings of cancer, and had not whispers always been his domain? He was not ignorant to the potential, even probable reality of the situation. The son of Mars... dying.

Lucius grew uneasy at his post, and Vulpes was acutely aware of the eyes that followed him in the Fort and out, watching for the first sign of betrayal. He was not the one to watch; he was but the third in line to succeed Caesar, and had no lust for the throne. He considered advising Lucius to send his amateur spies to the Legate's camp in the south, and decided against; it would be read as an attempt to deflect attention, and the result would only allow the Butcher more freedom as all resources were shifted to monitor Vulpes.

In the night he cleaned his guns and scouted the cliffs over the dam, laying down caches of supplies and plotting good points where one could get a clear shot or two before being seen. The first bullet would be for the Courier, and hopefully it would be enough, because he would need the second for Lanius while his wrath was still turned to the west.


	7. Chapter 7

Veronica was gone. Cass was packing her bags.

She wheeled on Boone the moment he emerged from the elevator, an hour or so after the Courier had come up.

"Did you fucking know what that monster's been up to?" she snarled at him as she threw a duffle into the hall. "Did you fucking know?"

The supermutant hovered behind the enraged woman, remarking sternly on her language and reopening closed bags to fold the clothes inside properly, clicking her tongue every time she found liquor wrapped up in an old shirt.

Boone turned around, pressed the up button, and stepped back into the elevator as Rose of Sharon Cassidy flung an empty whiskey bottle at the Courier's closed door with a roar.

The observation deck off the cocktail lounge was mercifully empty. He grabbed a few beers from the fridge and took them outside with him. Sinking into the minimalist metal chair he had dragged out next to the balcony's railing, he popped the cap off the first bottle, tucked it in a pocket, and gulped down a third of the bottle in one go.

So Veronica had found out about the bunker. He wondered where the girl would go, and if she would still fight at the dam. The Courier's plans were beginning to unravel, and his allies were leaving. Killing the Brotherhood had not been shrewd... or had it? Regardless, the man surely intended to fire the first shot soon, while he still had the advantage. But what exactly were his plans? The Legion dog had been quite insistent that his favor did not fall with Caesar, and Boone almost believed him. There had been something desperate in their meeting, and that both had survived the encounter meant something.

He drained the last of his first beer and tossed the bottle over the edge. It shattered in an explosion of glass on the 38's walkway, scaring the gamblers stumbling through the nearby gate. He opened another.

The door opened, and closed.

"So, Gannon," Boone half-greeted with a grimace, "you're Enclave?"

The doctor froze, and thawed, then snatched up one of Boone's remaining beers with a sigh.

"Was I that obvious?"

"It was that or the Brotherhood, and Veronica filled that quota," was his bitter reply. He shifted in his chair, and looked steadily up at the Follower. He had thought a lot on the subject of factions during his days tailing the Courier. "He collects us. One of each, like he's trying for a full fucking set. I'm not sure if we're tools or trophies anymore. Maybe bartering chips."

"He doesn't actually need us, though," Arcade muttered. "I think we're just... witnesses. To whatever he's planning."

"It'll be soon."

"Yeah. It will. The NCR was moving a lot of troops while you were gone. They're getting ready to push for the dam."

"So is the Legion," said Boone, peering out at the ruins of outer Vegas. "...I talked to their spy. The dog head." Gannon's pale eyebrows shot upward, crushing his forehead in wrinkles. "He's worried. Said to gun for the Courier instead of Caesar, when it comes to it. The battle. Implied he was doing the same."

"Vulpes Inculta tried to make a pact with you," Arcade repeated, dumbstruck. "Vulpes Inculta. With you."

"Yeah."

"And?"

"I'm thinking about it."

"You know, I really hate the Legion, but all things considered... that son of a bitch may be right."

They were quiet for a long time, Boone sitting, Arcade leaning against the railing. Suddenly, Arcade chuckled. The sniper quirked an eyebrow at him.

"The Legion's going to shit their tunics when Daisy flies her Vertibird in and drops Enclave in power armor on their asses."

They laughed bitterly until Gannon began to weep instead. Boone threw another bottle over the ledge.

* * *

"When will it happen?"

Weapons were spread across the Courier's floor. The man was crouched before a heap of melee weapons, separating them and lining them up.

"I'm deciding."

"And you're supporting the NCR?"

The Courier did not look at Boone. He was growing tired of the constant charade. He thumbed the edge of a machete, and set it aside for sharpening when it only drew a few beads of blood and not a torrent.

"I do not love the Legion, Craig."

His question went unanswered. The Courier fastidiously straightened a Japanese sword that had never seen combat, and moved on to its neighbor, a 9 iron that had.

"And the Brotherhood?" The golf club hovered an inch from the floor, suspended in the man-creature's balled fist.

"When you collar and kick a wild animal, it bites, Craig." Eyes like sludge, like decay, like death itself, staring daggers at him. Daggers and teeth and claws. "Biting is all it knows how to do." This with a strained smile, as if his words made any sense at all.

He laid down the golf club and picked up a designer kitchen knife Boone had seen cut through bone like butter.

"Have you been speaking to Vulpes, Craig?" The sniper startled at the unexpected turn. "I hope you have. He'll need you, soon."

"What are you talking about?" Boone asked, suddenly hyperaware of the arsenal at the Courier's fingertips, and how fucked he would be if the Courier decided the cosmic knife would look better embedded in his chest than lined up with the other blades.

"He's going to lose his family soon. His friends, his brothers-in-arms. You've experienced that already. You could help him reinvent himself, when the time comes."

"You're fucking insane," the sniper breathed. The Courier shrugged.

"Get some sleep, Boone. You'll need it. It won't be long, now. It won't be long at all."

* * *

He slept with a knife in his hand and a gun under his pillow. He did not sleep well.

The doctor lied awake on the bed next to his, staring glassily at the dark ceiling, but they didn't talk. There was nothing left to talk about.

There was only the wait.


	8. Chapter 8

When he came, he descended from the hills with an entourage of night stalkers and a single cyberdog, and entered the second battle for Hoover Dam to the sudden shrill screams of NCR soldiers. His face was freedom. His face was joy. His face was gaudy red with blood not his, and on each hand he wore the talons of a deathclaw, dripping with unknown poisons.

The NCR did not see him. They didn't expect him, and could not stop him. Beasts dashed among them, invisible but for the faint warp of light around them, and then fangs sunk into flesh.

The Legion vanguard hesitated on the dam. There was something horribly wrong, and it was charging toward them at a gallop.

In the distant northwest, there was the steady thump thump thump of the Nellis gallery firing endless rounds onto the cliffs and dam alike, tearing chunks from the infrastructure. A plane, a pre-war ghost, whined overhead and dropped explosives on the screaming troops.

The Legionaries in the front slammed to a stop as the horde of night stalkers broke out of their camouflage one by one, rattling and hissing like a dozen dying men. The soldiers behind them cut them down with machete and gunfire, only to hesitate in their stead.

A Vertibird crested the hills, and the slow among them were reduced to ash.

The Courier grinned. He charged onward with his pack, tackling a terrified Legionary to the ground, tearing at him with tooth and claw.

Many NCR began a hasty retreat. Many more shoved the would-be deserters onward. The two armies churned like standing waves.

The night stalkers closed the gap. The Bull screamed its pain and rage, just as the Bear did.

Lanius came forth, shoving through the frantic wall of his own force, pushing able bodies into the Colorado for the sin of their cowardice. night stalkers swarmed past him, oblivious. They had no interest in other predators, only the screaming prey. The Courier saw him, met his gaze, and retreated into the hills as lesser men collapsed around him.

"Come find me," he mouthed clearly before baring his teeth in a red smile, a death smile, and the Legate went.

* * *

Vulpes hurtled along the cliffs, and threw himself down as a spray of bullets crashed into the stone face behind him. He crawled to his mark, swung the muzzle of his rifle out over the gorge, and peered down the scope. He had seen Lanius pass through, but he had lost sight of him.

He needed to get closer. He needed across the dam.

He looked down at the bloodshed below, prayed to the gods for speed, and began his descent.

* * *

"We're too close! Back off, back-!"

A mortar shattered the asphalt in Boone's path, reducing the officer to spattered red spray and sending shrapnel whistling through the smoky air. He had ducked behind a barrier in time, but most of his cohort had not been so lucky. Dead lay around him.

He saw night stalkers ahead, gorging on the dead and wounded. He saw Gannon dropping from the Vertibird with a few others, in full power armor, as he had said. The doctor shoved the helmet that had been tucked under his arm onto his head, and swung the modified LAER he had stolen from the Courier's stash up in time to blast a hole through the next wave of Legion. The dam was being torn apart by the artillery; as drenched as it was with the blood of those who would claim it, it looked like its own wounds wept.

Boone took to the hills while he could. He had to find the Courier. It was all going to shit, and fuck if the Legion dog hadn't been right, fuck if the Courier wasn't certifiably insane, fuck if he hadn't seen him plow into battle with abominations in his wake.

He found a path, and charged down it. Stealth was implicit; the explosions and screams were deafening, and his footfalls were but whispers in a sandstorm.

He heard commotion, and dropped to his belly, crawling to the precipice. Soldiers of the Bear and the Bull faced off in the small gulch below. He turned his eyes up the path, and saw a giant. He brought up his rifle and scoped out the man.

Lanius' back was turned, and there was the Courier, talking quietly, but with clear manic spite. The distant man's eyes twitched upward, and suddenly, he ducked behind the giant's great mass, remaining carefully behind his unwitting meat shield.

Boone watched, and waited. He would give the Bull a chance, if only because he could not escape unscathed himself.

Let them kill each other. Let the monsters end themselves.

* * *

Vulpes fell on the dam, surrounded by monsters and men. A night stalker had appeared from nothing, had clamped down on his arm, teeth curling threateningly around his armor. Another pounced from behind, seizing his shoulder, wriggling its pliable head and forcing its sabrelike fangs grinding against the gecko leather he wore.

He kicked viciously at the creature on his arm, and it released. One more kick sent it plunging into the churning waters of the river, sucked into the mechanics of the dam. He drew a knife from his belt, and stabbed at the other. Sticky blood clung to his blade and hand as he gauged at its snout, its eyes, and at last it could hold no longer. It fell lifeless to ground to be trampled into paste.

His eyes turned up to the path Lanius had vanished down as he pawed the sweat from his brow, and crouching, took up his rifle once more. He could make it through, if he ran. He was almost sure.

He waited. The NCR was advancing, but the dam was a bottleneck for their forces just as much as it was for the Legion's, and the concrete barriers they had placed in preparation now hindered them.

He watched.

He ran.

Gunfire followed him, but his men did too, and Vulpes found himself leading a charge quite by surprise. He didn't mind. His self-appointed mission was paramount, and his men were expendable. The Courier needed to be stopped. Lanius needed to be stopped. If the Legion were to go on, if his life was to have meant anything, then he could not fail.

He would do it for Caesar. He would do it for himself.

They drew fire, and he vanished into the horde of NCR rangers. He took a helmet from one of the dead, quickly stuffing it over his own head. He tore the longcoat from another, shrugging it over his shoulders to hide his armor and gripping it closed in front. The rifle dangled in his other hand, heavy, tiring, but he didn't slow down as he pushed upstream past the unwitting Bear, and then up into the low cliff overlooking the land the Courier had chosen for Lanius' fall.

He dropped to his elbows when he thought he was close. He lifted the gun to his shoulder, and looked, and saw. Lanius had his back turned, and there was the Courier, and the Courier looked right back and smiled and ducked behind the Goliath, who now swung the Blade of the East to no avail.

So be it.

Vulpes took aim, and pulled the trigger.

* * *

Lanius' head exploded, and he crumpled forward. Boone did not think, but raised his crosshairs to the Courier's startled face, exhaled, and fired. The Courier shrieked; the bullet ricocheted off his scalp in a spray of blood and sparks. Metal gleamed from below rent skin, and he could feel those dark eyes turning on him, not so much angry as wild.

The Courier slapped a device at his wrist, and disappeared.

Across the gulch, a man cursed briefly but vehemently in Latin as Boone loudly snarled his own frustrations to the heavens.

Two pairs of eyes scoured the land below for the telltale ripple of a stealth boy, to no avail. Screams from below, but no sign of the crazed man with the deathclaw hands.

And then the earth rumbled.

Boone turned his gaze over the dam just as a horde of Securitrons crested the far hills, mowing down all men in an unstoppable assault. The air shuddered from his lungs, and his stomach clenched. The Vertibird that had been circling low over the fight suddenly dropped down, then tore away, all Enclave aboard. A desperate, pleading NCR trooper hung from the landing gear until one of the armored men leaned out and fired two rounds into him.  
  
He watched as the NCR and Legion fell alike. The Courier did not reappear, but the mass of Securitrons had their orders.

General Oliver was covered in pitch, set alight, and dropped into the ravine. Boone thought it unlikely he had the nerve to survive. Hsu might have, but not Oliver. Boone didn't really care. He was numb. It wasn't supposed to happen like this.

Word was broadcasted over loudspeaker that Caesar was dead, that he had collapsed during the battle. The remaining Legionaries wailed from where they lay on the ground next to their blown off limbs, taking it as a sign from Mars. Boone looked back through his scope across the gulch and panned until he found Vulpes Inculta, looking as lost as he felt. The fox's cold eyes stared without focus at the dam, and it occurred to him that the Courier had predicted this, all of this.

The Mojave was won at last. It had won itself.  
  
It wore the skins of the Bear and the Bull, and it laughed.


	9. Epilogue

_He had been wondering whether he could have done anything to stop it all when he was suddenly grabbed and yanked viciously away from the cliff face._

_Something sharp jabbed at his throat, something burning, something that froze and seized in his arteries, and the world swam and faded before him._

_He awoke in a shallow cave. Something cold wrapped uncomfortably around his throat. An unfamiliar weight constricted his arm. He opened his eyes, blinked blearily, and saw Vulpes Inculta sitting across from him, propped up against a rock, still unconscious from whatever they had been dosed with. He wore a slave collar that blinked red at his jaw. A Pipboy was attached to the other man's wrist._

_Boone looked down. He wore one too._

_A rope tied them together, one end tied cleanly around Vulpes' waist and the other around his, with about fifteen feet coiled loosely between them in a heap._

_He tried to stand, and couldn't. The drugs were wearing off, but slowly._

_He tried the PipBoy. There was an audio file waiting for him in the notes. The Legion spy was opening his eyes when the sniper pressed play._

_"Hello, Craig. Ave, Vulpes. Do you understand now? Do you see? Come find me. Find me in the Divide, and you'll find the answers. The answers to the questions you wanted to ask, and the questions you could never put to words. But before that, there are a few things you should know about the collars you wear..."_


End file.
